So after I installed Neon (via custom ZFS Root based on these instructions), it boots up fine, I can login via vtty2, and use `startx` and get to the Plasma desktop just fine, but no boot login. `systemctl get-default1 is `graphical.target`, and `systemctl status sddm` shows it's enabled and started fine

Code: Select all

● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-03-17 23:42:33 PDT; 19min ago
       Docs: man:sddm(1)
             man:sddm.conf(5)
   Main PID: 2103 (sddm)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 76373)
     Memory: 6.9M
     CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
             └─2103 /usr/bin/sddm

Mar 17 23:42:33 darklaptop systemd[1]: Started Simple Desktop Display Manager.
Mar 17 23:42:33 darklaptop sddm[2103]: Initializing...
Mar 17 23:42:33 darklaptop sddm[2103]: Starting...
Mar 17 23:42:33 darklaptop sddm[2103]: Logind interface found

Some new information. When booting with `nomodeset`, I boot right up into SDDM as I'd expect. Obviously has no GPU acceleration, but it's a lead, at least.

Not sure if Neon's installer, Calamares (as opposed to *buntu's Ubiquity), supports installing to zfs, or how well it does. Ubuntu instructions are probably valid, up until the actual installer is run. There are lielyb differences between what the different installers want for this, so investigating Calamares might be the direction to look at.

That's interesting claydoh, thanks, I'll take a glance.

However, I don't think it's an installer issue (in the SDDM case), seems to be some sort of GPU driver, or incompatibility, or something. When it's not loaded (the `nomodeset` parameter), things work as expected. I suspect it's that the default kernel is a 5.4, which is about the time Renoir was coming out, and so the `amdgpu` driver might not handle it correctly.

Success! After realizing it was a driver support issue, upgraded to 5.8 kernel via the package shown in https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=170280, and it's working great.

Really should upgrade the default kernel in Neon ASAP, especially as newer Ryzen APUs are coming out quite soon. Even with it being based on an LTS release, doesn't mean the kernel has to be _that_ far out of date.